Episode #200: How Vitamins And Supplements Are Made

In today's episode, how vitamins and supplements are made. Also, is frozen yogurt healthier than ice cream? The best way to soak grains? How to use CoQ10 properly. How to maintain hip flexibility. Synthetic versus natural supplements. How much should you exercise? What is earthing? Why is the same workout harder than usual? How to run hills. Should you ever have an energy drink? And how vegetarians should get omega 3 fats. Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast.

We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill, cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Welcome, everybody. I feel like I should say something really, really exciting or wave my arms. Imagine I'm waving my arms. It is episode 200.

Are you wearing anything funky right now?

I sure.

Are you wearing anything right now?

Well, nothing from the waist down, of course, because that's.

Well, it's podcast. We never record in our pants. That's a given.

But from the waist up, I'm wearing my Ben Greenfield Fitness, My personal trainer told me to eat more fat T shirt in celebration of today's show.

I love it. The old school one that you can't even get anymore. Yeah. Cool. I'm. I'm not doing anything too special for episode number 200. Aside from drum roll here, I've had two cups of coffee.

Holy.

And some Chinese adaptogenic herbs this morning. So I'm. I've got smoke coming out my ears.

So you're going to be bouncing off the walls.

I'm going to be. Well, kind of. I'm having a little bit of trouble with movement this morning because I took my kids to the water park yesterday and I went down the fast slide and I forgot to cross my legs. Guys out there who have forgotten to cross your legs on the fast slide, I'm a little bit limited in terms of movement from kind of like the.

Crotch down the water slide enema.

Exactly. Other than that, I'm good.

Awesome.

News flashes.

Okay, we've got some news flashes from good old twitter.com BenGreenfield Some cool stuff came up this week. What do you want to highlight for us?

Well, the first thing I should highlight, of course, before we even jump into the news flashes, is that if you enjoyed the intro music. Oh, yeah, that is Brock's band. So you guys put out CDs and stuff like that, don't you? Or I mean, like, if people wanted to go onto the Internet and listen to you in all your glory, they could do so, right?

They definitely can. They can go to itunes or just look for the websites.

Put a link in the show notes for folks.

Oh, that's a great idea.

I will do so because for those of you listening in, Brock, in addition to being the loyal sidekick of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, also prepares much of the show notes. So, yeah, go ahead and put a link to your tunes in the show notes.

Brock will do.

That way folks can check them out. As far as Twitter. Yeah, a few things. You know, I noticed there's this book, Fit to Fat to Fit, that's big on the New York Times bestseller list right now. It's about a personal trainer that decided he was going to figure out what it was like to be fat, gained like 70, 75 pounds and then lost it and wrote a book about it. And he's been on all these morning shows and stuff. At least here in the States, I thought, what exactly does that do to the body? Because it goes above and beyond gaining the weight, losing it, and then putting it back on when you look at it from a fat cell perspective. So just in case anybody's thinking about trying out this experiment themselves or taking this as a sign that you could, for example, whatever, gain a bunch of weight over the holidays and then lose it again and experience no deleterious effects and possibly end up on some morning TV shows, the fact is that they've done studies. They had an interesting study at the Mayo Clinic over in the UK where they took a bunch of volunteers who were at normal body weight with no chronic disease and they gave them a diet that, no joke, was basically ice cream, Shakespeare, king size Snickers bars. They reported this in the study. That was the actual bar that they used. And an energy drink called Boost plus, which is like 300, 400 calories a pop. And they got all these people to gain at least 5% body weight over an eight week period of time. And then they took all the people that gained this weight and then they had them increase their level of physical activity and work with a dietician to lose that weight over another eight weeks. So it was eight weeks rapid fat on, eight weeks off. And everybody, just about everybody, was able to get back to their original body weight over the eight weeks after they put on all that weight. But there were some interesting little things that happened that I think kind of give this yo, yo, weight gain, weight loss, Deal a little bit of a red flag. When they returned to their original body weight, their body fat was distributed differently. They actually deposited more body fat on their lower body, like hips, butt, thighs. Now, the interesting thing about that, when you look at it from a physiological perspective, is that lower body fat is more added not by increasing the size of the fat cells, meaning taking the existing fat cells that you have and just like shoving the extra fat into them. But lower body fat is more correlated to a growth in the number of cells. Meaning that when you gain weight rapidly like that, your body is so overloaded with calories that it has to not only increase the size of the fat cells, but also the number of the fat cells. And anytime you have a greater number of fat cells, you've got a greater propensity to get fat faster in the future.

Yeah, because those don't go away. Like, once you've got them, you can fasten them.

You never lose your fat cells. So when you gain weight rapidly, no matter whether or not you plan on getting it off, it's always going to be harder for you to lose weight in the future or it's going easier for you to gain fat in the future. More specifically, so increasing the number of fat cells. And then the other thing that happens is when your fat cell number increases compared to when your fat cell size increases, the amount of leptin that's released per fat cell goes down because you got more fat cells. So that's your appetite control hormone. So you're also looking at not just the biological ability of your body to put on more fat faster, but also the neurological component of you actually having more appetite cravings or less of an ability to control your appetite. So that is why I think that despite the popularity of this book, and I'm sure the guy is doing some good in terms of spreading his message about, I guess, him being a personal trainer who knows what it's like to be fat. I think that yo, yo. Weight gain and weight loss is a pretty bad idea overall.

Now, do you think it would have been any different if those people hadn't been eating things like the Snickers bar and like the. The really bad food, if they'd gained the weight in, I don't want to say a healthy way, but in. In a little more smarter way, like eating more healthy fats and more like just increasing the amount they were eating rather than changing it to a bunch of junk.

Right. Not more. More nutrient dense.

Yeah. Foods with better, like truckloads of spinach and avocados. Rather than Snickers bars.

Bit less rich, less sugary. I'm blanking on the word. There's a blogger called Stephen Guene who has a blog where he talks about the food reward hypothesis and the fact that the richer and better tasting the food, the more likely it may be to make us obese. I forget the name of his blog, but yeah, that's a good point. You know, for like a bodybuilder or a football player or, you know, like whatever high school athlete or college athlete who's trying to become more competitive and gain muscle mass. Yeah. I would suspect that by arranging things in a different way and eating more nutrient dense foods, you could probably get away with, you know, when you gain body weight, putting on more. More muscle mass, less fat mass. But you know, frankly, the goal of this study for these folks was to just put on fat and is by eating lots of rich food and not exercising. So that was interesting. And of course, everything that I find during the week in terms of these studies, in addition to the ones that I talk about on the podcast, I Tweet about from twitter.com BenGreenfieldFitness Interesting article in the New York Times that came out this month a couple of days ago, and it was called Got milk? You don't need it. And it's actually. I'll link to it in the show notes. It's an interesting read. It's a nice short article, but it's written by Mark Bittman, who is. He's a pretty popular dietary author. He wrote the book how to Cook Everything. What he talks about is basically what the government tells us about dairy and dairy consumption and the need for dairy consumption and preventing osteoporosis and the realities of dairy consumption when it comes to contributing to things like chronic heartburn and a lot of other conditions that he and some of the folks that he works with have found to be completely eliminated by eliminating consumption of specifically milk. My thoughts on this are that, you know, when you look at milk the way that I perceive dairy, because I know that we've got a large contingent of Paleo listeners who, you know, aren't really doing much dairy. Is that dairy? You know, just like I consider sugar to be kind of like a sometimes drug and caffeine to be a sometimes drug. You know, I look at dairy the same way. It's chock full of growth hormone and insulin, like growth factor, two components that are very good at making a small animal turn into a big animal and sometimes a big fat animal. But those are also two components that really accelerate muscle growth and really accelerate your body being in an anabolic state. And so in my opinion, dairy is fantastic for the athlete who needs a post workout kick to be able to put on some muscle for the growing child, even for like an older, you know, like an elderly individual is trying to stave off sarcopenia or loss of muscle mass. You know, in my opinion, dairy certainly has its time and its place. I think most of the health issues that go along with consumption of something like cow's milk are either because the people drinking it are sedentary and not in a state where they need a big hit of growth hormones or insulin like growth factor, or they're getting a lot of the other kind of deleterious compounds that come with the milk, like hormones and synthetic derivatives and some of the other nasty stuff you're going to encounter when you're consuming milk that is from a commercially raised dairy source. But overall, it was an interesting article and I'll link to it. So there's that. And then the last thing was a study that was published back in 2007, but I came across it recently and thought it was really interesting about VO2 Max, which is your maximum oxygen consumption. This study was in the Journal of Applied Physiology and found that markers of inflammation, specifically markers that you can get tested pretty easily by going into your lab or going to directlabs.com or wellnessfx or any of these other companies that measure markers of inflammation, like cytokines, specifically one called interleukin 6C reactive protein and fibrinogen, kind of three of the main markers of inflammation that you can get tested, those are negatively correlated with your VO2 Max, meaning that the higher circulating levels that you have of inflammatory markers, the lower your VO2 max is. And so I think this makes a really, really good argument for including things like omega 3 fatty acid sources, fish oil, and we'll talk about omega 3 fatty acid sources for vegans and vegetarians later on in this podcast. But I thought it was really interesting that it goes above and beyond just improving your heart health or decreasing your level of inflammation related to chronic disease factors, but also has a direct effect on VO2 max. So the less you are going into something like whatever, a triathlon or for example, the weekend that we're recording this or the CrossFit games that you attend to your inflammatory levels and specifically focusing really heavily on anti inflammatory diet and maybe even stepping up your omega 3 fatty acid sources, going into an event where you need that high oxygen consumption, it's A good idea. It's an interesting study. I'll link to it as well.

Very cool. That's really, really cool stuff.

Yeah. So that's it. Special announcements.

All right. I guess this is a good time to let all the folks know that this episode is actually sponsored by Audible once again, which is a great purveyor of books, audiobooks. And like, we were talking about this before the show. I've actually been a fan of Audible since way back in the day when they put them on tape. Are you old enough to remember that, Ben?

I think so. I do remember seeing some tapes up on the shelf while my mom was changing my diaper.

I'm not talking about 8Track. I'm not talking about the reel to reel. They're just a little cassette tapes. But yeah. So this podcast is sponsored by Audible. And if you go to audiblepodcast.com Ben, you can get yourself a free audiobook just by signing up today. And then. And then after that, I think it. It turns into some sort of a subscription model. But I would recommend. Ben asked me if I could think of any books to recommend. And I know this isn't necessarily. It doesn't necessarily go along with the fitness or nutritional aspect of the show, but I think it goes with making the soul happy. There's a book called Born Standing up by Steve Martin, the comedian and movie star Steve Martin and also author, banjo player and amazing banjo player. Yeah. So that's my recommendation. Go and get that. It's read by Steve Martin himself. So it's actually. It just gives it that extra authenticity.

Love it when the author reads their book. That's always better than some random dude. Yeah. And Steve Martin's a cool guy. I like his stuff. So, yeah, there you go. And we had a few people kind of confuse you. If you're an existing Audible member, you can't get the free book. When you go to audible.com Ben, you need to be like a new Audible member or else, I don't know, freaking, like, use a different credit card, a different email address and whatever, your uncle's mailing address, and maybe you can create a false identity and still a free book. I'm just saying it's possible. So other special announcements, You've heard me harping about this future of health now deal. I even sent out an email about it recently. I actually got some angry responses back from people who were like, this stuff isn't free. What are you talking about? Free videos. This is July 11th today. So starting yesterday, the videos were actually made free. Up till this point, the videos have been not even available at all. And the whole deal is you can get access to these 20 videos, which are really, really good videos. Listen to last week's podcast that I released with Arai Beckman on the anti aging post that I did to get some more information on the videos. They're great videos. You don't have to buy anything. They're going to ask for your email address. You give me your email address, you can watch the videos. But I really like what these folks are doing in terms of trying to put together this global health project that is going to give people access to a lot of practitioners that normally only like the rich and the famous and the influential would have access to in terms of physicians and people who are doling out really, really good health advice and kind of connect you with learnings from these folks. The way that they're monetizing it is you can watch the videos online, but if you want to download them or have them on your computer, you got to pay for them. But either way you can go watch the videos and it's well worth it. Check those out. We'll have a link in the show not and then a couple of other things. Two videos that I shot this week that I think you'd enjoy are one, how to make gluten free waffles, specifically how to soak and mill your grains and then use a blender to make a gluten free waffle mix. We made the waffle mix on Saturday night and had some fantastic waffles on Sunday morning. And then another video on how to make a Mexican mocha mix using your blender. So just brand new blender called an Omni blender we've been kind of experimenting with. It is about 200, $250 and it works better than our $700 Vitamix that we sold because this Omni blender is way better and it's way less expensive. So we'll put a link to those videos in the show notes for you. And then the last thing to mention before we get to this week's Q and A is folks, if you are on the cusp of wanting to have the adventure of your life this year, maybe you're bored with life, you just want to spike things up a little bit. Come with Brock and I to Thailand. Brock's going, is his girlfriend's going, I'm going. We've got about eight other folks right now. Graham from Australia who's been on this podcast before, he's going and we're going to go to Thailand for two weeks. There's two different triathlons we're going to do. We've got about four days in between the races where we're literally hopping on a boat, going to this place you can't get to by car because there's no cars at all over in a place called Railay Bay. We're going to lounge on the beach. We've got all the hotels put together. We've got pretty much the whole thing planned out. You just show up and it's really. I mean, you only live once. So this is the adventure of a lifetime. I've been to Thailand four times, Love it. Every time. And you're going to have a great opportunity to just hang out with us and have fun. So we'll put a link in the show notes and if you have no clue how to actually get ready for the race, I'm also for anybody who comes with us, I've got a training plan that I put together that I'll just give you for free that you can use to train for the race. So, yeah, Thailand. Check it out.

It's going to be awesome.

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Listener Q and A. All right, being that this is episode 200 and we want to do something exciting and special, we decided to make this a completely audio question episode. So every single question today is going to be somebody who called in or emailed in an audio question for us. And if you hear your question read or if you hear yourself actually reading your own question in the next hour or so, however long it takes us to get through these, make sure you contact ben greenfield fitness.com send an email to there so you can claim your free book.

Yeah, we've got two books. Just let me know what you want. I've got. I'll either hook you up with my new book, get fit guys guide to achieving your ideal body type. Awesome. And that's one choice. Just let me know if you Want that one or I've also got and we'll link to the interview that I did with this guy in the show notes because it's really great but I've got a Casey Kreischy's book, the Super Health Diet and that one's really good too.

I've actually got that book right in front of me. I'm staring right at it.

Yeah, it's got a ton of cool stuff in it and I'm a huge fan of his diet. He's also the personality and the inventor behind all the Living Fuel stuff, so love his stuff. But yeah, just let me know which book you want if you hear your voice on today's podcast and we'll get it out to you.

Alright, so let's get things rolling with Danny.

Hey guys, great show. This is Danny in Red Bank. I have a question about when you're taking it easy and taking the kids out for ice cream or frozen yogurt. I'm not sure if it's better that you just to just go with the traditional ice cream or frozen yogurt. And I have an ingredient list of a place that I go to quite often with the family. It's got maltodextrin, whey, polydextrose. The biggest ingredient is cultured skim milk, sorbitol and milk protein isotate. And then the gum and the gum gar gum. I'm sure you know just your thoughts on taking it easy with the family. Thanks a lot.

Now this is a great question. Okay, Froyo or ice cream?

How about both? Perfect time to ask this in the middle of the summer. And you know, frozen yogurt does have the advantage of having the friendly bacteria in it that keep your digestive system healthy. So you've got in many brands of frozen yogurt live active cultures and those.

Don'T get damaged by the, by the freezing process.

They do not get damaged by the freezing process. However, most frozen yogurt that you're going to get at the, at the grocery store has been heat processed and unless it has the words on the label contains live and active cultures. It's, it's not going to have the live active cultures in it. Now some of the brands out there that you can, you can wander into in terms of the stores like Pinkberry, Golden Spoon is another one. TCBY is good. Red Mango is another good one. Those are some of the frozen yogurt franchises you're going to find here in the States. For example. All of those that I just mentioned, they actually do qualify for having live and active cultures in their yogurt. And so you've got that advantage over ice cream in terms of you having a lot of the good bacteria. You know, kind of the flip side in frozen yogurt is, yes, it is. You know, despite the fact that it says that it's low fat or fat free, of course, it's very high in sugar. And so assuming that you're walking around like most folks with fairly full storage carbohydrate, your body's going to take any of the sugar in there and very efficiently convert it into triglycerides in the liver, send it out of the bloodstream, and it'll get stored as fat. The other issue is that they. They try with a lot of these frozen yogurts to mimic the texture of a higher fat product like ice cream. So they add a lot of different emulsifiers and binders and thickeners to it. And usually these are. These are derived from things like soybean and corn. So that's another kind of kind of issue with the frozen yogurt, if you're trying to avoid those type of compounds that may be like genetically modified compounds, et cetera. So that's kind of the pros and the cons of frozen yogurt. Now, we certainly do occasionally show up at the frozen yogurt shop with our kids. I personally don't really do much of the yogurt. I actually do very, very small amount of the yogurt, and then I go nuts on the toppings. Like, I'll go grab some dark chocolate and some nuts and throw that stuff in, and you can generally find a couple of toppings that are not too bad at the frozen yogurt store. The fresh fruit, by the way, is also really good. And a lot of times, if you just put a bunch of fruit in the cup, a little bit of yogurt, a few nuts, it's a pretty good little dessert. And it's, you know, it's still a good dose of fructose and sugar, but it's better than just doing it. A big old thing of frozen yogurt. So that's the deal with the yogurt as far as the ice cream goes. Because we generally, in our house, for the most part, we avoid dairy from cows for some of the reasons that I stated earlier in this podcast. We do ice cream, but whenever we do ice cream, we do coconut ice cream. And I'll link to it in the show notes, But I did a post a while back about what we did during the entire day of our kids birthday party because we just spoiled them and they got lots of treats and lots of food. Everything healthy. I mean it was a total like dairy free, gluten free, super healthy day. But one of the things that we did was coconut ice cream. And we'll generally do coconut ice cream, you know, once every few weeks in the summer we'll make up a batch and it' syou know, in that post that I'll link to is the recipe. But it's basically like eggs, coconut milk, and then you've got all of your flavorings and some salt and you're essentially using your ice cream maker to make a coconut ice cream. And it's really, really good. And you can also, at the same time you can do coconut popsicles. And we recently in the Ben Greenfield fitness inner circle actually did this whole video on how to make a really, really good coconut popsicle. It involves a couple other things like setting up a little double boiler set up in your kitchen and it's not too hard to do, but coconut popsicles, coconut milk ice cream, big fan of that versus dairy ice cream versus soy ice cream. You can get coconut milk ice cream at the grocery store as well, by the way. So, you know, that's kind of the deal is either is okay. I would say that if I was going to rank them in order of healthiness, I'd start with coconut ice cream because you got good high levels of fat, very satiating, and you're not dealing with big boatloads of sugar or soybean or corn or any of that stuff. Next on the list would be frozen yogurt, primarily because it does have, if you get it from one of these places, live active cultures in it. And you can always throw in some extra things at the frozen yogurt store like nuts and stuff like that, so you don't have to do as much of the yogurt. And then last on the list would be ice cream, even though ice cream is higher fat than frozen yogurt, which is great from a hormonal perspective. There's just a lot of other issues with, with dairy and ice cream. And compared to coconut ice cream, it'd be kind of last on the list for sure.

Yeah, I've got a bit of a sweet tooth, I admit. And Ben has access to what I eat every single day, so he already knows this. But I do really like a little bit of sweet stuff here and there and I actually have started doing for last couple years, I take a bowl, chop up a Banana like really finely into it. Then throw that into the freezer for a couple hours so it gets good and frozen. Then pull it out and put a little bit of regular like plain yogurt on top of there and just sort of mash it around a little bit. And the texture of the frozen banana mixed with and the sugars really come out when it's frozen as well. Once you mix it around in the yogurt, it becomes like, it's like a really nice, sweet, creamy ice cream. And then you can sort of throw some extra berries and stuff on top of that and maybe a few dark chocolate chips. I find that's a great sort of substitute for just going straight to the store bought stuff.

Yep, exactly. And you can always get just like a regular like full fat Greek yogurt at the grocery store or you can throw some. This is actually something I've been doing recently as like a little post workout deal is you can throw some nuts in there. I've been using manuka honey recently which is really great for the digestive tract. Put some Manuka honey in there and you know, a few other ingredients and it's pretty similar to ice cream. So so many different ways to skin the cat when it comes to getting the sweet tooth and the nice frozen summer dessert.

Delicious question, Danny. Thank you very much. All right, let's move on to the next question from Scott.

Hi, Ben, this is Scott from Cleveland, Ohio. He had a great podcast and loved a website. I feel that it's really helped me a lot in my endurance training and just my overall fitness. I really feel like I have a credible place to go to to learn about and stay up on the latest and greatest on fitness and nutrition. My question is regarding nutrition. I personally really enjoy baking bread and I've pretty much limited my family's bread intake to only what I make at home, especially after listening to your podcast and interview about the book Wheat Belly. When I make my bread, I use organic creams such as spelt, quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth, teff, and I ground them myself and I bake the bread only using these whole grains. I don't purchase any processed flour and I was wondering about how you soak your grains and if you grind them after you dry them. I used a method called pre fermentation where you soak the ground grains for like 12 to 24 hours. And I was just wondering, is this the same thing as soaking the actual grains and does it serve the same purpose? Appreciate the help. Take care. Bye.

Bye. So as many podcast listeners probably know, we don't actually eat a bunch of bread here at the Greenfield house. Honestly, we probably go through like a loaf of bread every six months now. We used to do more. My wife will occasionally make bread, but this soaking process called pre fermentation, where you soak the ground grains, it's really not a bad way to go if you are going to do bread. And prior to industrialization, just about every culture and most people in America when they make bread, would use a fermented or a soaked grain before making whatever breads, cakes, cookies, bagels, you name it. The main reason for that is that in a non soaked grain you've basically got these anti nutrients specifically, for example, like a phytic acid, which can combine with magnesium or calcium or iron or zinc or any of these other minerals in your intestinal tract and block their absorption. So you got less nutritional intake when you're eating that food. And you also tend to have some digestive issues, some bloating, some gas, and a little bit of inflammation that goes on when you're consuming a grain that hasn't been properly prepared, soaked and pre fermented like that. And you know, the main reason for that is that a plant wants to survive. So when we eat an untreated anti nutrient containing seed, what happens is that tends to pass through the digestive tract whole. And we would end up, you know, in many situations kind of depositing that seed elsewhere after it's passed through our digestive tract. Now if we allow the seed to basically germinate and all it needs is a little moisture, a little warmth and a little bit of acidity to do that, it will sprout. And a lot of these enzyme inhibitors are basically neutralized through this sprouting and germinating process. The nutritional quality of the seed, for example, the grain is vastly improved. The ability of it to inhibit digestion is vastly decreased. And it's just basically like this natural pre digestive process that occurs. There's a really, really good cookbook that goes into this in detail that we own and that we use. Actually, even though we don't make bread, we do a lot of crackers. We do, for example, like the gluten free waffles and stuff that I've mentioned. It's called Nourishing Traditions. I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but it's probably the cookbook that we use most here at our house. Now when you're pre fermenting, usually you've got some kind of acidic medium that you're putting the grain into after it's been ground or milled and you're essentially soaking it overnight. One thing that's really, really good to soak grains in prior to making a bread would be just a bas apple cider vinegar. It's a really nice acid medium that can, that can really, really help with a lot of this, a lot of this beneficial process that occurs when you're naturally pre digesting the grain by soaking it. So you soak in an acidic medium and then you go on and you make your bread. The really, really important thing here is that you're not using flour that you've purchased from the grocery store because it has a very, very short shelf life. You know, like you take a flour from, you know, whatever, a fresh ground wheat and it goes bad really, really quickly. And one of the reasons for that is because the oils in the wheat germ and those can, those can go rancid as it sits along on the shelf. But you lose a ton of the nutrition in any grain the longer that it, that it sits around. That's why if you're going to make your own bread, you want to be milling in, grounding and not going with like flour that store bought flour. In the podcast that we did with Dr. William Davis, the author of the book Wheat Belly, he talks about how most of the wheat that you get your hands on these days, even if it is just like a whole wheat flour, because of the way that we have genetically modified wheat, by trying to make it generate a higher yield during harvest, has resulted in very, very high amounts of wheat germ, agglutinin or WGA in it. And that essentially has the texture of human hair almost and is completely undigestible. And so it causes a lot of issues with inflammation and autoimmune reactions when you consume it. And so if you're gonna get your hands on some type of a wheat that you're going to mill yourself and you're going to grind yourself and you're going to pre soak in this acidic medium and then make bread with. You either don't use regular wheat and you instead get your hands on like a more ancient grain, like Einkorn is one example, Kamut is another example. And you go that way or else you use some different type of grain like a buckwheat or a quinoa or an amaranth or a millet or something of that nature. And all of those you can make pretty decent breads with too. Incidentally, if you just wanted to Completely avoid that. You can still do some baking with things like coconut flour and almond flour. Frankly, it just doesn't have the same nice taste as a nice bread. You know, a good fresh baked, you know, whatever sourdough or, you know, a wheat bread made from one of these more ancient grains. But, you know, you could get away with using like a coconut flour or an almond flour as well. Ultimately, though, to answer Scott's question, yeah, that soaking process called pre fermentation, where you soak the ground grains, that's fantastic. And I highly recommend it. I would just make sure that you're still not using a modern form of wheat to make your bread.

I want to go over to Scott's house while he's baking his bread and just inhale.

Yeah, yeah.

There's no smell like that when I'm.

Even when I'm at like a restaurant, I'll generally avoid bread unless it's sourdough. And sourdough is the one bread that, because it has gone through that fermentation process, generally has a lot lower levels of these enzyme inhibitors in it. And so, you know, typically if they, if they, if a restaurant that I'm at is one of those restaurants where they do bring bread to the table, what we'll do is if sourdough is an option, we'll just ask for sourdough only. And that's a good way to go.

I just knock it out of the waiter's hands as he's bringing it over. Don't even give me that.

Don'T chips, literally. Because those fried triangles of death are so bad for you. At Mexican restaurants, I literally just. Just have them bring me salsa and guacamole and I just eat that by the spoonful.

Delicious. All right, let's move on to the next question from Dwayne.

Hey, Ben. My name is Dwayne McKee. I'm an ultra marathon runner in Gainesville, Florida, and I have a question. I want to know. I've been taking coordinate Q10, 100mg a day, and I was wondering if there's any benefit to taking more than that and, or to recycling it off, you know, more of an off season type mode, and then adding it back in, you know, two or three months out from, you know, my next 100 mile race. So that's it. And thanks. I love all your stuff that you put out. Appreciate it. And thanks again.

Okay, so I guess we should probably start with who would take CoQ10 and why.

Well, CoQ10 is this molecule that's part of the electron transport chain in your cells. It's how your cells produce energy and life. It's just like this structure that sits inside your cell. And basically the way that it works is when you need to produce ATP energy, you're inside your cell, you've got this electron transport chain and electrons are shuttled along this chain and that's how energy is generated. CoQ10 is a primary component of that cellular energy production. And so the whole idea here is that by supplementing with CoQ10, if you're trying to create more energy or manage those electrons more efficiently, you're going to enhance your ability to do so. And it turns out that CoQ10 is a really, really potent antioxidant because of its ability to handle these electrons. And it's certainly one of those anti aging type of compounds that has really, really good antioxidative and anti inflammatory properties because of its ability for you to have less damage from these free radicals that circulate in your body from, you know, just from living. Now when we look at the effects on exercise and physical performance, you know, you got to get pretty high with your dosage, about 200 to 300 milligrams per day is how much Coenzyme Q10 that you'd need to take to actually have an effect on like fatigue related to exercise, you know, like your sub maximal physical performance. And you're looking at a lot of supplements out there being around like in the 30 to 50 milligram range. So you're generally going to have to take a lot of this stuff to see a really beneficial effect. Now when it comes to heart health, some of the antioxidant properties of coenzyme Q10. Yeah, you're going to get some benefit if you're taking, you know, 30, 50, 100 milligrams a day. But generally you gotta get closer up to that 200 to 300 milligrams per day range to actually see an effect on physical performance. And there's really been no acute side effects like GI distress or anything like that, or any clinically relevant adverse side effects from even going as high as 1000mg a day of coenzyme Q10. Now I'm not convinced that that's necessary, especially when you see benefits in clinical studies with 200 to 300 milligrams a day. But the toxicity and side effect level on the stuff is fairly high and it's a good compound. I personally, I either will use. For a while there I was using the hammer race caps which is one Source of Coenzyme Q10 made by Hammer Nutrition. Now I mostly use one called Nutrarev because it is in liquid form and it's got a couple other things in there that I really, really like, like alpha lipoic acid, for example, which is another really, really potent kind of anti aging compound. I do a couple servings of Nutrarev on a daily basis now and it's a little more absorbable too because it's in its liquid form. Ultimately though, I do think that if you've got some of the other basics dialed in, like fish oil and magnesium and vitamin D and you've got some extra money to spend on like an anti aging compound or a good antioxidant for exercise, Coenzyme Q10 is a really, really good choice with decent research behind it.

Awesome. So this, the nutrarev, just to go back to that, you said you take it a couple of times a day?

Well, I take two servings once a day. Usually like in the, in the mid morning or the mid afternoon, I just throw a couple servings of this nutrarev liquid into a glass of water and drink it.

Okay, so how many milligrams approximately that you were saying is like 250 to 300 is where it gets magical. Is that about what you're taking?

About 250 a day is what I'm taking. So yeah, it's good stuff. It is. Over@PacificFit.net there's a Nutraf. It's just like this liquid bottle you can get you keep in your fridge and it's good stuff. The only problem of course is you can't travel with a big liquid bottle. So you know, that's where having something like a coenzyme Q10 capsule on hand for when you travel, you know, if you want to include it when you travel would be beneficial.

Awesome. All right, our next question comes from Tricia.

Hi, Ben, this is Tricia Burke, and my husband and I both listen to your podcast. He kind of got me hooked and now we're getting all our friends hooked and really enjoy it. But we have a question for you. We are both runners, but we're also going for our black belt in taekwondo, which for the most part we feel like cross training wise works great for building muscle. Our legs are getting stronger, but the one thing that we're both struggling with is it seems like when we ramp up our racing schedule, especially when we're training for races and stuff, it almost seems like we're losing flexibility in taekwondo. So let's Say, I run longer during the week than in class. It's harder for me to go down to the splits or to get higher kicks or stretch. And so I was wondering, maybe this is just in our head, but if not, if you had some thoughts as to why that's happening or if there's ways to counteract that. So, anyway, that's all our question was. But thank you again for all your information. It's been a blessing.

Yeah. So Taekwondo athletes making that conversion to running and back and trying to combine the two, I could certainly see flexibility being an issue when you're trying to do a roundhouse kick or, I don't know, I'm gonna show my.

I don't know any of the move.

Names, the moves, the Taekwondo moves. But, you know, essentially, when you're running, you've got these short, little choppy movements that you're. That you're creating. Short, little choppy compared to something like, you know, Taekwondo or sprinting or whatever. And anytime you're taking these. These short steps over and over again, chronically in combination with pounding the pavement, you're getting this hip flexor shortening effect. And that's really where a limitation in flexibility in a runner, and specifically a distance runner, takes place. Because when you're taking these short, little choppy steps and your hip flexors are becoming tight, with each of those steps, you affect the rotation of your pelvic bone. Typically, you tend to begin to rotate your pelvic bone anteriorly. That can limit flexibility in the back area of your pelvis, your sacroiliac joint that can travel up the spine. Limit flexibility in the spine, and your entire body can begin to lock up from tight hip flexors. And anybody who sat at a desk for eight hours without standing up or sat in an airplane all day long on an overnight flight or something like that, knows that it's not just your legs that feel tight when you stand up. Your whole body does, and running can create that same effect. Certainly. Brock, you've certainly had to deal with hip flexibility issues more than I have. And one of the things that I've done with you as your coach is give you hip opener exercises. Can you explain some of the things that you've been doing in terms of hip opening?

Yeah, the biggest things that made a really big difference for me are doing a lot of lunges. I do like I spend a lot of time doing, doing lunge stretches, so, like, getting way down deep into it, getting a little bit of a twist in during the lunge, getting my shoulder down really low. And sometimes I'll actually feel a little bit of a pop right in the. In the. In my sacroiliac, which is something I actually went to a chiropractor for for a while and had art done on it. It got so bad, I. My sacroiliac got so locked up, I actually need to. Needed professional help to get it mobilized again.

Yeah. And that's one of the reasons that yoga and doing hip opener exercises from yoga is a really, really good way to maintain some of the flexibility. Of course, the issues with yoga are that you lose some force production anytime that you elongate a muscle or become excessively flexible. And if that's a concern for you, with an explosive sport like Taekwondo, you may want to focus on hip opening exercises that are more dynamic, like front to back and side to side leg swings. In addition, doing some hip strengthening exercises that are going to remove some of the load off of those hip flexors while you're running would be really, really smart, too. There's a great PDF that came out, put out by the running injury clinic, and I'm going to link to it for you in the show notes. I tweeted about it a few weeks, but it was originally designed to just prevent or eliminate it band issues in runners, but it works really, really well for just general hip strengthening. And it's a series of exercises that involve external rotation of the hips and swinging of the hips. And that'd be something really, really good to add in, along with some good hip opener exercises to maintain the flexibility that you need for type 1 toe without reducing your force production capability. And that's. That's certainly where I'd start. So, of course, this episode is episode number 200, so I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

I think a lot of those exercises that you've got me doing would really work very, very well hand in hand with the Taekwondo. Like the. I'm doing a lot of clam shells and fire hydrants and hip flexor extensions and like a lot of those movements that are actually associated with what. But at least my limited knowledge of Taekwondo.

Yeah, yep, exactly. So I'm no Taekwondo expert, but.

All right, our next audio question comes from Sandy.

Hi, Ben and Brock. This is Sandy from Phoenix. You've spoken against birth control pills because they're synthetic hormones, but yet you recommended vitamin D supplementation. Why is the synthetic hormone vitamin D okay, but not synthetic estrogen and progesterone? Thanks.

Okay. I was really excited about this question because I think I know the answer, but I'm not gonna. Well, is it because a vitamin D is a precursor, a hormone precursor, and the birth control pill is an actual synthetic hormone.

I thought you were just excited so that you could get off your birth control pill.

I've been off that for years.

Yeah, I mean the. And really both are synthetic. When you look at vitamin D3, whether you're doing, I recommended in the past, like the sublingual vitamin D spray, the vitamin D capsules or pills, the vitamin D, the liquid oil drops from Carlson's. Anytime you're looking at vitamin D generally, in most cases vitamin D is made from sheep's wool or lanolin. And so what manufacturers do is they take this lanolin from a wool bearing animal like a sheep, and you purify it and you crystallize it and eventually you get this substance called 7 dehydrocholesterol, and that's your precursor. And then what they'll do is expose that form of cholesterol to UV rays in the same way that your skin would get exposed to UV rays to make vitamin D and they get vitamin D3 and then you can manufacture that and purify it, crystallize it, liquidize it, whatever, and add it to a product.

That's really cool.

Yeah, it is. Unless you're a vegetarian taking vitamin D. Because I probably just ruined that whole idea for you now that you know that's an animal based product, which is why there is another way to get it. Another way that you can make cholecalciferol is using yeast. Basically they've got this one genetically engineered form of yeast that you can also expose to UV rays. And that yeast when it's exposed to light basically makes 25 hydroxy vitamin D, cholecalciferol, the vitamin D3 form that you would normally supplement with. So a few different ways that you could make vitamin D, and in any of those cases it would still be considered, in my opinion, synthetic when you compare it to a natural form of vitamin D. Like for example, I do a couple tablespoons of cod liver oil on a daily basis. Now I do also take a vitamin D3 supplement because the amount of cod liver oil I'd have to take to get as much vitamin D3 as I want to get starts to add up calorically. I do a couple tablespoons of cod liver oil on a daily basis. And that's a natural form of vitamin D3. So are eggs. So is something like beef liver or even, for example, milk. You've got natural forms, natural Animal based forms of vitamin D3. I suppose the most natural form would be you catch a tuna or salmon or whatever and eat that. But all of that is vitamin D3, natural vitamin D3 source. And then you've got these synthetic sources. Either way that you look at vitamin D, you can't find the same type of studies associated with deleterious effects from either synthetic or natural forms of vitamin D as you can when you look at studies that look at birth control pills. Now, there's no natural form of a birth control pill, but when you look at the birth control pills that are out there, the way that they're formed is you take synthetic progesterone or not progesterone, progestin and synthetic estrogen. And those are typically mixed together, they're diluted and they're put into a big mixture and kind of stirred in with some binding agents and that makes a powder. And then you can eventually form that into a capsule or a tablet more specifically. And those are definitely synthetic. But when you look at birth control pills, there are a lot of studies out there that kind of give me pause when it comes to me being able to recommend something like a birth control pill in good conscience. You do get, and this has been shown in many studies, dozens of studies, anywhere from a 10 to a 30% increased risk for breast cancer. And one of the main reasons for that is the reason that I've talked about before with women and weight gain and think I that's estrogen dominance. You're introducing a bunch of synthetic estrogens into the body and generally you get this pro growth, pro hormone effect that increases your risk for cancer. The same can be said for cervical cancer and birth control pills being a major risk factor, especially if you've been on them for more than five years for cervical cancer. They can definitely aggravate any existing GI conditions that you have, like gastroesophageal reflux disease or Crohn's. They can raise blood pressure in some women, which can also raise the risk of stroke and increase the risk of blood clots as well. Other things that birth control pills have been associated with, you know, we talked about inflammation markers in the bloodstream. Women on birth control pills, for some reason, higher levels of C reactive protein, which is an inflammatory marker, lower levels of antioxidant activity from something like Coenzyme Q10 is a perfect example of something that you see a lower blood level of in women who are on birth control pills. Estrogen influences the availability of thyroid hormone because it increases a specific thyroid binding protein in the body. So you get impaired thyroid function. You can get lower testosterone levels which in women can decrease your sexual drive and your libido. And also if you're exercising, make it harder for you to build lean muscle. And it's got a lot of issues with it that you don't see with vitamin D. So until you show me studies that show that synthetic vitamin D has the same type of side effects associated with it as synthetic estrogen or synthetic progestin, you know, I'd have trouble kind of, kind of saying that you just shouldn't take it because it's synthetic. Really, really good book that you should check out and I'll link to it in the show notes. It's called Sex, Lies and Menopause and it really goes into why synthetic hormones can have this type of effect on the body. So it's called Sex, Lies and Menopause and I'll link to it in the show notes. You know, I get this question sometimes when I talk about why I'm not a huge fan of birth control pills. People ask me, you know, what me and my wife do and really all we just use condoms. You could use like a fertility monitor if you wanted to. We don't use one. But basically what a fertility monitor does is it takes your temperature in the morning and it gives you a red light, a green light or a yellow light. So red means that you're fertile and it flashes. Red means that, meaning that you're ovulating.

Don't do it, don't stop, stop, stop.

It's just like stop. Green is pretty much no chance of getting pregnant and then yellow is kind of a possible chance. And I'll link to this in the show notes. You can check it out. It's called a fertility monitor. That's a hormone free birth control method. And it's a little bit easier than trying to mark things out in the calendar because it just, just takes your temperature and figures it out for you. Those are a couple different options. Birth control pills, since they have come around, they have been kind of titrating the amount of hormones that are in them. The pill is definitely lower in synthetic hormones than it was when it first came around. The newer formulations may possibly be less risky, but you're still playing with fire in my opinion. So if you just really insist on being on a birth control pill, at least use some anti inflammatory supplementation, good fish oil and some turmeric in your diet. Try and control some of these issues that it's going to create when it comes to risk of blood clots and cardiovascular risk and increase in inflammatory markers. But ultimately it's much, much different than.

Vitamin D. And even though Sandy's question and most of your response of circulated around the birth control pill itself, the same can be said for like an IUD or one of those subcutaneous injections that people get because it really, it all has the same estrogen and progestin in it as well.

Yep, exactly. So, you know, follow up questions, of course, you can always ask them in the comments section or in the show notes question over in the podcast episode.

So cool. Well, let's move along to a question from Brandon.

Hi Ben, this is Brandon and I have a question about exercise frequency during the week, particularly for fitness individuals. And I'm thinking about performance, but more just general overall fitness. You know, the whole looking good when you're naked type thing and just health over a lifetime. So not really thinking in terms of becoming a marathoner or anything like that, but just again, being fit throughout life. The reason I ask is because I was wondering whether, say, doing really, I guess, highly stressful workouts for shorter periods of time like hit and circuits and things like that would be more beneficial for a fit individual if they were only done maybe four times a week, maybe five times a week. And using exercise to stress yourself out enough where your body may not just be able to handle adding more exercise or whether you should tone down, I guess, how hard you go during exercise so you can work out five or six times a week. And the reason I ask this question is because Arai Beckman, I think, was talking about the benefits of exercising every day and I was just wondering what Ben's opinion on that was. Thanks. Bye.

I like this question because it's so moderate. We don't often get questions of how do I just be healthy and fit. It's usually how do I Excel at this? 12 days smashing race through the mountains.

Exactly. So kind of like, you know, what's the basic level? And you know, the slightly cop out response on my part is that it does depend quite a bit. So, you know, it depends on your goals and what you're trying to accomplish. But if we're just talking about looking good and being fit, one of the things that this really comes down to is time under tension of the muscle. And there's been some decent studies that have been done on time under tension and also the actual load that's necessary to lead to kind of a gain in muscle. And when we're talking about a Gain in muscle. Usually assuming that you're controlling your diet and kind of losing some fat at the same time, that's usually what's going to kind of make you look aesthetically pleasing or look better is this gain in muscle. Usually, if you've got anything less than about 75 to 80% of the maximum amount of weight that you can lift one time, you're not going to see significant gains in muscle mass unless you're doing lots and lots and lots of reps. You can take a light weight, you can do a ton of reps and totally exhaust the muscle, but you're not going to get as efficient an effect as if you lift with 75, 80%. And for an advanced athlete, it's probably even higher than that. You're probably looking at 80, 85, 90% in terms of the amount of heavy things that you need to lift. So when we're talking about hypertrophy or muscle growth, time under tension is kind of a significant component. Now, generally we talk about weight training and building muscle in terms of set. Like you do X number of sets and X number of repetitions. But really all we're looking at when we're looking at the number of sets that you do and the number of reps that you do is the total amount of time that the muscle is actually under tension. So during a typical training session, you'd want the muscle to be under tension, ideally for anywhere from about 40 to 80 seconds. That's a really, really good place to start. If we're going to talk about the actual amount of time that a muscle is under tension. The amount of strength training that you're going to do then is going to vary based on whether you're taking one second to lift the weight and lower the weight, 3 seconds, 10 seconds. If you're doing more of a super slow type of training, but you should be going, anytime you go in and you're working a body part or you're doing a full body weight training session, every body part that you're planning on working should be exposed to some type of tension for about 40 to 80 seconds or around in there. Ideally, you should be doing the up phase as fast as possible and the down phase or the eccentric phase, you know, very, you know, relatively slow and controlled. And depending on your level of fitness, this is where the it depends part comes in. That may leave you sore for five days, it may leave you sore for, for two days, it may leave you sore for a week. But when that soreness has subsided and the muscle has Bounced back, you go back and you do it again. So when it comes to strength, you do that, you throw in some. Some basic activity in terms of staying on your feet, walking, taking the stairs, staying generally physically active in the same way that a hunter gatherer might. You throw in a few sprints here and there, and that's really, you know, that's, that's all you need to maintain generally decent fitness. That really just scratched the surface, but it's kind of the basic idea.

Yeah, I think that's a great place to start. All right, well, let's move on to the next question from Andy.

Hi, guys. I love the show. I was listening to an old podcast where you were interviewing a doctor about the benefits of cold therapy. In passing, he mentioned something called Earthing. In my imagination, I pictured someone lying in dirt to help speed up recovery. For a few minutes of searching the Internet, I wasn't exactly proven wrong. It was all very confusing and no one can explain things quite like you guys. So I was wondering, what is it? When I got hurt as a kid, was my dad onto something when he said, go rub some dirt on it? Thanks.

Now I remember the episode that he's talking about. It was about cold thermogenesis. And I can't remember the name of the guy who you were talking to about that.

Jack Cruz.

Yeah, he referred to earthing a couple of times, and I kept waiting for him to actually go into what this earthing was, but he didn't actually get there at any point. So this is a great question.

Well, I first heard about earthing when I talked to Dr. Jeffrey Spencer on this podcast. The guy who worked with team Radio Shack and Lance Armstrong's team for seven, eight years. He's one of the more popular and efficacious personal trainers, massage therapists, and chiropractic physicians for a lot of these cyclists. And he's big into having the athletes asleep grounded. And this is based off of a research study that I'll link to in the show notes. But the idea is that when you look at what happens to everything from your electrolytes, your serum electrolytes, your free T4, your thyroid stimulating hormone, your inflammatory markers, all of those are favorably influenced when you sleep either in direct contact to the ground or if that's not available to you, you sleep on a grounding mat or a grounding pad that simulates you being in contact with the ground. So if you step back and you look at this from a scientific standpoint, the idea is that when your body is in contact with the ground. Like if you were going to be walking around on the surface of the earth barefoot, not inside a tall building, but literally like maybe on some, some dirt, some grass, that type of thing, you get some free electrons that are literally transferred into your body via the soles of your feet. And free electrons have an antioxidant, anti inflammatory effect. So the lack of touching the ground, the fact that living in homes, in tall buildings, using rubber plastic soled shoes that keep those free electrons from getting transported into the body, may have a little bit of an effect on the fact that many of the chronic diseases that we face in our society are based off of inflammation and free radicals. So when you look at a lot of the studies that have been done on getting in contact with the earth or using a grounding mat, or an earthing mat, if you don't know what that is, I'll link to it in the show notes that simulates being in contact with the earth. You show an improved immune system activity. You show basically this really cool kind of resynchronization of your 24 hour circadian rhythm. So better sleep, less emotional stress. You can see an effect on a variety of ailments and injury via what are called thermography images which show areas in the body that are at a higher temperature or may have some amount of inflammation in them. And I'll definitely show some of the more powerful studies and some of the more powerful links. I'll put a link to those in the show notes for you. But what it comes down to is that if your able to spend some time outside barefoot, on grass, on dirt, on sand, at the beach, for example, you may experience some fairly positive effects, specifically when it comes to sleep quality and injury healing and an anti inflammatory effect. The concept is called earthing. It's also called grounding. And you would need to do it preferably with your skin in contact with the ground, because your skin is a very, very good conduct. Whereas wearing a minimalist footwear like Vibram Five Fingers, it's still going to have rubber between you and the earth. So you'd want to be barefoot. And you essentially just try and get your skin in contact with the ground every day. And if that's completely impossible for you because of a metropolitan area that you live in or something like that, you can buy a grounding mat or you can sleep on a grounding path, what's called an earthing mattress. And this sounds like woo woo science, but some of the studies are actually pretty decent that go into grounding and I personally walk out of my house every morning, go stand in the yard, look at the sun and do about 10 minutes of yoga or so. Even when it's very, very cold out, I'm out there. So yeah, I think that there's something to be said for it from an injury prevention, from an anti inflammatory and from a general kind of physical health standpoint.

So Andy's dad wasn't quite right when he wanted to rub some dirt on his injuries. But he was close.

He was barking up the right tree for sure. But I would say that there are better things to rub on injuries than dirt.

All right, let's move on to the next question. And I'm going to say that it's from Bad Workout Guy just because he didn't say his name.

Do you ever have a just a bad training day? For instance, you go in on say a Monday or Tuesday, you do your swim routine, you pound out a really good session, you don't get real tired. For me, I'm a beginner triathlete. So say I got 45 minutes in the pool, swim it non stop, no problem. Come back again on Friday to do your second swim workout of the week and after about 15 minutes, same thing, but you're just out of breath, tired, having to take stops and get some air. All right, thanks, Brian.

Okay. Bad workout days? Yeah, I have them. What about you, Brock?

I had one yesterday.

So I mean the reasons are multifactorial. I'm prepping the presentation right now. I mentor a small group of of coaches and personal trainers via a website called superhumancoach.com and our next class that I'm teaching is on the multiple reasons why people get over trained and kind of advanced methods of enhancing recovery and keeping the body bouncing back day after day and being able to kind of take on hard workouts. One of the things that I'll be going into in that class is why we get over trained and it's multifactorial. Some of the reasons are inflammation, which has come up a few times on this podcast. But you know, like an inflammatory diet, eating higher amounts of sugar, higher amounts of processed foods. You go back, you look at what you ate the couple of days before you had a hard or a bad day of working out. You may find that to be the case if you'reif you're writing down what you eat or you know what you've eaten. Gut dysbiosis can be an issue, meaning that you, you have a lack of proper intestinal flora and good bacteria in your digestive Tract, maybe you haven't been taking probiotics or eating fermented foods. And that can certainly affect your training status, as can a low intake of just basic antioxidants and anti inflammatories like fish oil, cod liver oil, some of the other stuff that we've talked about. Low quality sleep can certainly do it. Even a low quality sleep two or three days before can affect a session three days down the road and then just lifestyle and emotional stress. That's a huge, huge factor.

That's a big one for me. I know for me, when I have, if I've. If I've gotten really emotional and like really anxious and stressed out, that drastically affects my workouts.

Yeah, it's more draining than you'd think. And that's why, you know, for example, I have one of these EM2 or EM wave two units from the HeartMath Institute that tests your heart rate variability. And I can instantly know if I am emotionally stressed instantly. Some people can just kind of tell in their gut, but there have been times when I've been stressed out. I didn't even realize it. And I can test my heart rate variability, know it, and then use some of the methods that the software that comes along with that program kind of teaches you to get my heart rate variability back to where it needs to be. And typically it's some deep breathing methods combined with some emotional relaxation, thinking about things that you're very, very grateful for, kind of creating feelings of love and gratitude and things that are going to decrease emotional stress. But yeah, I mean, that can be a huge, huge factor as well, just the emotional stress standpoint. But sometimes that's not the issue. Sometimes it's simply that you, you've kind of cooked yourself or you're getting close to that state of cooking yourself. And that's where I recommend that you track as many parameters as possible. Go back and listen to the podcast that we did with the guys from restwise where they're tracking body weight, urine color, mood status, a bunch of different factors that kind of, when put together into this algorithm, just spits out a recovery score every day. That's one way that you can track it. Heart rate variability is another method. If you go with the restwise method, their software comes with a pulse oximeter and you just test your blood oxygen saturation every morning, and you want it between about 95 and 99% every morning. When you wake up, when you see it start to drop below that, that's generally also a sign that there is too much inflammation. And, and too much, your body isn't recovered properly. So I know that I just went over a ton of stuff. But when it comes down to it, there's more than one way to skin a cat. If you really want to know and be able to put your finger on when you're going to have a bad day or avoid having a bad day, period. You either test your heart rate variability on a daily basis or you get this Restwise system and you track the parameters that you're going to feed into your Restwise online software. Combine that with the pulse oximeter that the Restwise software comes with. Those would be the two ways that I would go about it. Either way will work pretty well. I personally go with the heart rate variability because I don't have a lot of time to track all the other variables that Restwise has on it. Ideal and best case scenario would be if Restwise came with heart rate variability. I know that they're working on that, but you know, you basically track it and you can pretty much identify this stuff and nip it in the bud before the bad day actually happens. So if you do find that you're having a bad day, sometimes, I mean, honestly, I find that on a bad day where I've got emotional stress, lifestyle stress, I'm having a hard time working out, for me, I can always swim. I've just identified that as something that I can do. You may find that, you know, you can, you can run on a bad day, but you can't bike and you can't lift weight. Weights or lifting weights feels great when you're having a rough day, but swimming, biking and running is kind of out. I tweeted this last week, but one thing that I've noticed too is on a bad day you can generally kind of do like chronic aerobic exercise and get through it, but you have a hard time doing things like pull ups, bench press, squat, overhead press, a lot of these heavier lifts. And that's generally a sign that they're really close to being overcooked too. That's why you got to be super careful with aerobic exercise because it's really easy to train through and over train yourself. So those are my random thoughts on having a bad day.

I like it. The only thing that I'd add in there, and you know, I'm terrible at this, I'm going to give this advice, but I actually can't follow it myself because I'm way too much of a, A type personality. But I know people out there who actually give themselves if they're having a bad day, they're feeling crappy at the beginning of a workout, they'll put push through to a certain point. So maybe they'll go like a quarter of the way through the workout, or they'll go 10 minutes into their run or something like that. And if they haven't turned around, if they aren't feeling better, then they'll just drop it and say, screw it for the day or for that workout and just call it quits on that one. The reason it doesn't work for me is because if I'm there and I'm working out, I have to finish it or I mentally just can't deal with myself. So if you're one of those people that can actually sort of say, you know what? This isn't working out, and stop, go have a shower and go home, that's. That's good too.

You know, I like the poster that I saw. I think it was on the htfu.com site, and it said, I don't stop when I'm tired. I stop when I'm done.

Yep.

And, you know, I. Maybe it's a. Maybe it's a flaw and potentially is going to subtract years off my life, but I tend to go more towards that side than I do towards them having a bad day. So I'm just going to rest.

So, yeah, I'm actually sort of regurgitating some advice that I heard from Lucho. He's a big believer. He does the podcast over at the Endurance Planet, the Ask An Ultra Run. He's. He's often says that if you're just having a bad. A bad workout, if it's not working out for you, just can it for the day. Yeah, I could do that, but I. I can't.

That. I rarely do that, like, even honestly, like, because most of my runs are beside the river. If I'm having a bad run day, I'll just literally, like, go jump in the river and start swimming in the river. I mean, like, I will finish a workout no matter what those cases.

All right, well, let's move along to another question from Stefan.

Hi, Ben, this is Doug from Atlanta, Georgia. Just had a quick question about hill training and running. I've been running for a couple of years. My endurance is picking up. My pace is getting a little faster. Training for a marathon in the fall 8, and I just ran a 10k on July 4th Peachtree Road Race in downtown Atlanta, which is where the marathon's going to be. And the hills just always seem to Wipe me out. Seems like no matter how much I build up my endurance to run distance, that whenever I get on the hills, I struggle to get up them. And once I get over the top, it just feels like I've lost all my momentum and energy and I struggle to get it back. So wondered if you had any tips for how to. How to attack the hills? You know, the best stride, the best way to run, and then, you know, any tips for training, strength training, that sort of thing? I would appreciate it. And Congratulations on number 200. Thanks. Bye.

Yeah, hills are a big struggle for a lot of people. I'm just going to give Stefan the three main ways that I found it to get really, really good on the hill. So my three keys for becoming a better hill climber when you're running, number one would be to include plyometrics. So those are going to increase your neural recruitment of muscles and make you a little bit more explosive. For hills, plyometrics means you're doing things like single leg jumps up onto a raised surface, like a stair or a step or a box. You do encounter movement jumps where you're dipping down and then jumping as high as you can. You're doing depth jumps where you're stepping off a raised platform, landing, and then explosively jumping again. Anything plyometric is really, really going to help with force production. So that's one thing I do. I would, and this is probably no surprise for you, I would definitely include strength training. And I would specifically be including, like, single leg squats, squats, lunges, reverse lunges, deadlifts, and squats. And I would be going heavy once or twice a week on those because that's going to really, really help you to improve your training economy, your efficiency, and your neural recruitment as well. I've got an entire book out on strength training for triathletes, and those are some of the main exercises in that book. For running, the last thing I would do is literally drill on the hills. There's one form of training that's really, really cool. They're called Lydiard Hill repeats because they originate from Arthur Lydiard, who's a really good runner and running coach. And it kind of teaches you how to be a more efficient runner on the hills. And the other cool thing is that you're doing your drills on a hill, so you're eliminating all of the impact of sprinting and bouncing on the flat ground. But Lydiard Hill repeated. What this means is that you would find a moderately steep hill that you can run up and you would Alternate between sprinting up the hill, skipping up the hill, bounding up the hill, meaning overly exaggerated strides where you're bounding and going between those three methods of climbing the hill. So you could do like nine repeats of the hill where the first repeat you're sprinting it, the second repeat you're skipping it, the third repeat you're bounding it. And then you go through and you do it again and then one more time. So you do nine repeats with the full recovery, like a walk back down the hill between each repeat. So as far as kind of checking out some images, some examples, some written stuff, I wrote an article for the Wildflower Triathlon because that's a really hilly run course. And I'll link to that article for you because I did put a link to some of the things that I just mentioned when I wrote that article. So that'd be a good one for you to check out. Out.

One thing that I always tell all my runners when, when you're actually running the hill, and especially during the race, not necessarily when you're training for it, because you do want to push yourself hard when you're training on the hills, but when you're actually in the race situation, you're trying to moderate your, your energy expenditure and keep your heart rate down. Think about pumping your arms. Don't think about your legs, think about your arms. So the more you swim, swing your arms just neuromuscularly, your legs are going to turn over. Just. They will. They just the harder you pump your arms, your legs will also go harder, but you're taking the focus off of how tired your legs are or how much you're working. Also shorten the stride and think about like you're running on hot coals. So you're getting your feet off the ground quickly so you're not burning your toes on the hot coals. So you shorten the stride, the turnover is a little bit quicker, and just pump the arms. It's amazing how if you just concentrate on the, those three things, it makes a really big difference. And all of a sudden you'll notice that your breathing is easier. You're like halfway up the hill and you, you didn't notice it. And then you crest the hill and get back into your regular stride and away you go.

Yeah, it also helps if you can visualize like a, like a, you know, a hot babe or a nice juicy steak or something like that waiting for you at the top of the hill.

I just tie a stick to the top of my head with a snickers bar.

That's another way to do it.

All right, let's move along to the next question that comes from Sarah.

Hi, Ben, my name is Sarah and I'm calling with a question for your podcast. I was wondering how and why do those sports energy drinks work like Rockstar and Red Bull? Are they really that bad for you? Or is it okay to drink one in order to get the energy to go out and work out? Anyway, Ben, thanks a lot. Love the podcast and look forward to hearing more. Bye.

Energy drinks. I used to drink a lot of these, by the way. You know, the. Have you seen the Rockstar energy drinks, Brock?

I have, yeah. Those great big really Ed Hardy T shirt looking cans.

I used to go through three or four of those a day.

Oh, dude.

When I was personal training because I'd show up at the gym at like 5am and you know, by the time I left around 7 or 8pm that's how many I'd gone through. Because you got to stay peppy and motivated. You know, I was bouncing between training folks and teaching spin classes and, you know, you got to keep your body going somehow, right?

I guess so.

You know, the main idea behind energy drinks is that they actually were really popular in Asia before they got to the US like back in the 60s, they actually had, you know, Japanese pharmaceutical companies turning out energy drinks that, that contained as their primary ingredient the same thing that a lot of energy drinks contain these days, which is taurine. And taurine is this amino acid. And it's not an essential amino acid, but it is an amino acid. And the idea behind taurine is not only is it an antioxidant, which ironically means that it can help protect you against a lot of the, the sugar and the acidic compounds and processed derivatives that you're going to find in energy drinks. But there have been studies that have been shown that taurine can help to give you a more positive mental performance, more positive mood, may have an effect in terms of improving your attention and may actually improve your athletic performance in terms of increasing your time to exist, exhaustion or your VO2 max. And that's one of the reasons that it's a key ingredient in a lot of these energy drinks, because it is one of those amino acids that you can really feel. And it is something that has some decent research behind it. Now, most energy drinks are not just including taurine in there, but they're also putting some central nervous system stimulants in there, like ephedrine or caffeine, typically some type of natural energy booster. Like ginseng or high dose vitamin B supplements. Usually you may find something like ginkgo biloba in many. Inositol is one that you're seeing a lot too, which is similar to vitamin B in that it can help with neurotransmitters metabolism. And a lot of these energy drinks are basically just cocktails of all of these compounds. I really wouldn't have that much of an issue with energy drinks if they did kind of throw some taurine, some ginseng, some B vitamins, and trace amounts of caffeine at you. But most of the traditional energy drinks that you'd like drink. The problem is that they also contain high amounts of caffeine and also high amounts of of preservatives and sugar or artificial sweeteners. I've talked about sugar and artificial sweeteners and I don't think I'm going to spend much time harping on those. But the main issue with the caffeine is that when you ingest it and it goes into your stomach, it's going to travel to your brain pretty quickly. And when it's in your brain, it binds to nerve receptors called adenosine nerve receptors. So what that does is that when caffeine is linked up with all of those adenosine receptors and it's blocking adenosine, you generally begin to get kind of a constriction of the blood vessels that feed your brain. And this increases the neuron firing rate in your brain and it sends a message to your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline or epinephrine, which is your fight or flight hormone. So the longer amount of time that you've got, the, you know, your blood vessels being constricted to your brain, these adenosine cell receptors being blocked, the more adrenaline you're going to produce and eventually the more and more caffeine you're going to need to get that same effect. Now, churning out adrenaline over and over again consistently throughout the day would be a really, really good way to eventually deplete your adrenal hormones and to go into adrenal insufficiency or adrenal exhaustion. And overproduction of cortisol, eventually depletion of cortisol. But initially overproduction of cortisol, which is kind of your primary stress hormone, and just one cup of coffee can increase your blood Cortisol levels by 30%. And while that's great when you need a little kick in the morning, getting 10 times that throughout the day from an energy drink is a pretty big issue. So my main issue with energy drinks is the adrenal exhaustion. Secondary to that is the sugar and the artificial sweeteners and some of the preservatives. And there are healthy ways to get that energy kick. Most of them are the type of energy drinks that come in the powder form because you're not dealing with a lot of the sugar and the artificial sweeteners and the acidity from the acids that go into the actual canned supplement. But ultimately, that's kind of the idea behind the energy drinks. And as far as Sarah's question, is it okay to have them every once in a while? Energy powders? Yeah. Like the stuff you'd get in, like a packet or something of that nature. Energy drinks, I generally just stay away from.

All right, now that I know that you are drinking that much Rockstar for a while, I'm not going to feel as bad when I have my extra cappuccino in the afternoons.

Yeah. And really, like, don't get too scared. I mean, most of the studies that were done with, like, college students dying or whatever, you know, all these urban legends you hear on the Internet, usually you're talking about mixing this stuff with alcohol, which is, you know, you're mixing an upper and a downer, and that's where you're getting risk of dehydration and some kidney and liver toxicity and some really, really inflammatory markers going up in the bloodstream. But for the most part, your worries about energy drinks are going to be the same as your worries about either drinking soda or drinking too much coffee. So think about it that way.

It's kind of like a combination of soda and coffee.

Yeah.

Which actually sounds like it would taste about the same as what I imagine a rock star tastes like.

Try that. Like a shot in the dark. Like, drop a shot of espresso into.

A can of coke into a can of, like, orange soda. Cream soda.

The US Patent Trademark Office. And get that right away.

Absolutely. Okay. Our last question comes from Sam.

Hi there. Ben and Brock. This is Sam, and I wanted just to call with a question. I say I love the show, so thank you very much. The question pertains to getting omega 3s as a vegetarian. And as a vegetarian, I don't take fish oil and so limited to other sources of Omega 3. I know that most of them aren't as well absorbed. So therefore I try to get as much as possible. What I'm wondering is, what's the highest dose you can get at a time in order to get the most out of your absorption? For Example, if I have a flax breakfast cereal or flax crackers with some chia seeds or possibly a whole avocado on my salad, is all of that absorbed or am I overdoing it? And should I space it out through the day? Hopefully I can get this question answered in order to make the most of the veggie sources I have for Omega 3 and hopefully catch up to all the meat eaters out there. Thank you so much. Bye bye.

All right, I think we've talked about this a few times before. The whole problem with the vegetarian diet is there is a lack of fat or at least a little more effort has to be put in to get those fats.

Yeah. And for a while I used to kind of say, well, as a vegetarian, it's like you're just accepting that fact that you can't get enough Omega 3s. Actually, I have an interview coming out this Saturday with Rich Roll, who is one of the few vegan folks that I've spoken with who actually does stuff right and does get decent amounts of specifically like fats and omega 3s in his diet, in my opinion, from what I gathered from reading his book and speaking with him. And so we're talking about a host of different kind of superfoods that fly under the radar. In my interview with him, it's kind of a fun interview. You're going to learn about a bunch of foods you maybe didn't know about and some new ones you can try. But vegan and vegetarian diets, while being notoriously low in fats, and especially the omega 3 fatty acids, which are your most anti inflammatory fatty acids that you can get, do have sources available. You can start off by making sure that you're working in walnuts, flaxseeds, chia seeds, stuff like that into your diet. But really, when we're talking about the mega doses of omega 3s that would be available to vegans or vegetarians, you're looking at algae as being a really good source. And most of the time nowadays you can find really good, what are called micro algae supplements. Supplements, which are these gelatin capsules that are going to contain an algae compound or else like tablets that you can chew that are algae based that are going to have really, really good levels of omega 3 fatty acids in them. And if I were vegan or vegetarian, I would be doing algae on a daily basis. It's chock full of a lot of other compounds that can help you. Algae is really high in chlorella, it's really high in spirulina, which are very, very high in a variety of amino acids, acids and vitamins and minerals. But specifically you're getting a lot of your essential fatty acids from algae based sources. So that's what I would do is I would go the algae route. Incidentally, it's kind of interesting when I do high dose spirulina or chlorella, I personally have this kind of weird reaction where my mouth gets itchy and I haven't talked to many of the people who experience this. It's kind of rare, but, but I almost have like this slight allergic reaction to a really, really good chlorella or spirulina source. So, you know, I gotta be a little bit careful.

I wonder if you're slowly turning into a whale.

Possible, yes.

Getting those tendrils that. Yeah, never mind that.

I'm producing a lot more sonic frequencies. Like maybe it's just gas, I don't know. There's one really, really cool source of algae that I found recently. It's called Energy bits. You can check them out@energybits.com but they come in these cool little tin cans and you can keep in your purse or your car or whatever and pop them like popcorn. And they're just like these algae tabs and they've got kind of this cool popcorny type of taste to them and they're chock full of a lot of this stuff. Stuff. I actually talked to the company and they gave me a discount code that folks can use. It's Ben. So you go to energybits.com and use discount code Ben and they'll send you some of these basically like LG tablets that you can chew and they're actually pretty good. So you can check those out. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes too.

Now how about Sam asked about the if he should get all of his Omega 3 at one time or try to spread it out over the day.

Just like with vitamin D or any other fat soluble or fat source, it doesn't matter, your body stores it. I mean you could take, you know like vitamin D for example. You could take 25,000 units of it on a Sunday and then not take vitamin D again for a week. You know, fish oils, fatty acids you could, you could literally just slap. Like if you could tolerate it stomach wise, you could drink a bottle of cod liver oil or take 100 of these algae tablets at the beginning of the week and have the fatty acids kind of stored away. But ultimately there's typically some gastric emptying and some GI distress issues that can be associated anytime you megadose with something. So I'm a bigger fan of just spreading stuff out throughout the week. Not necessarily spreading stuff out throughout the day, though. So, for example, if you were to get like, these energy bits, you could take 20, 30 of them in the morning and call it a day. Or if you wanted to, you could do, you know, 10 with breakfast, 10 with lunch, and 10 with dinner. There's no real research behind the actual dosing regularity of something like that.

And that is it. That wraps up episode 200.

Amazing.

What do you think, Ben? Are you going to be around for another 200 episodes?

Another 200? We'll see. I mean, we've got a lot of. A lot of folks supporting the show. You know, it's your donations that kind of keep this thing going, honestly. So, I mean, if you go to BenGreenDleFitness.com and you click that little donate button on the right side of the page, leave us a ranking or rating in itunes. Yeah, I could see us rolling along for quite a period of time. I need to eventually replace Brock with some kind of a hot, sexy female dj.

I'm going through hormone therapy actually at the moment to become the hot sexy female dj.

Those birth control pills, by the way.

Yes, of course.

But, yeah, could totally see another 200. So, yeah.

Awesome. I love the fact that when these episodes go out, the system that we use to actually put them onto itunes and get them onto the Internet tracks how many people are actually downloading it. It's in the tens of thousands. For me, that just fills me with so much pride and excitement that that keeps me going Absolutely. Every week.

Yeah. I mean, actually, between this podcast and the Get Fit Guy podcast, I think we've got almost a quarter million listeners everywhere week. So it's up there. Keep on listening in, folks. We're making a difference in the world. And again, everything we've talked about today you can find over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com in the show. Notes to podcast episode number two. Tune in this weekend for a cool interview with Rich Roll and have a great week. Get the inside edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone.

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